Could a New Global Treaty End Violence Against Women and Girls?

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Giving Compass’ Take:

· Global Washington profiles a project launched in 2013 called “Everywoman Everywhere” that is fighting for the protection of women and girls around the world and takes a deeper look at Every Woman Treaty’s Global Working Group that is campaigning for a global treaty to end gender-based violence against women and girls.

· What is the best way to fight gender-based violence? How can donors support these efforts and purse gender equality around the world?

What would happen if every country in the world were legally bound by a comprehensive international treaty against all forms of violence against women and girls? The Every Woman Treaty intends to find out.

The project was launched in 2013 under the name “Everywoman Everywhere” by a global group of women’s rights activists, who determined that there is a large gap in international law regarding the protection of women and girls.

Certainly, the United Nations’ (UN) 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and 2000 Convention against Transnational Organized Crime have all pushed the conversation forward in important and significant ways. But amid the limitations of those existing declarations and conventions, the group saw the urgent need for a legally binding global treaty that holds countries accountable for all forms of violence against women.

Since its launch, the effort has blossomed in a very grassroots fashion into a coalition of more than 1,700 women’s rights advocates and experts, including 840 organizations, in 128 countries.

“I was sold straight away,” says Laurie Tannous, who joined Every Woman Treaty’s Global Working Group in 2016 and serves on their special expert committee on human trafficking. At the time, Tannous – an international business and Canadian immigration attorney – was attending conferences and giving speeches on trafficking, when a new friend introduced her to the Treaty.

America finds itself in a moment of political polarization. At times, nonprofits can reflect or even magnify that polarization. This is a recurring theme even within the non-profit sector and expressing disagreements on challenging topics.
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Some people do abuse nonprofit status to spread hateful rhetoric. There have been witnessed overwhelming evidence that hateful agendas have been pushed by individuals within nonprofit organizations. That hostility can yield tragic consequences: The FBI documents thousands of hate crimes each year, with most directed against vulnerable people in marginalized communities.
But there are rare cases where the nonprofit form is abused by those with hateful agendas. At GuideStar, we have heard a rising demand from our users for information on hate groups — which I’ll (imperfectly) define as those organizations that denigrate a group of people based on their identity.
Given that concern, in February we began to flag the profiles of 46 organizations that had been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In the weeks and months since, we have heard from both supporters and critics of the center’s approach. We acknowledge that there is a deep and difficult conversation to be had with Americans of all political, cultural, and religious backgrounds about how to most appropriately identify hate groups. That is a line not easily drawn.
Over the last couple of weeks there is interest on if there is an option for mediation and what that role would look like.
We don’t know if there is, or if GuideStar would even be the right organization to play that role. But we all must seek to climb out of our echo chambers and engage with those who have different views.We need a new kind of conversation about hate in the nonprofit sphere.
One thing is very clear, the conversation about hate in the nonprofit sphere needs improvement.
Read the source article at The Chronicle of Philanthropy
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